


All Through the Night

by oflights



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Coping, Friends to Lovers, Insomnia, M/M, Post-Trade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:23:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22345342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oflights/pseuds/oflights
Summary: Nate has trouble sleeping on the road. He and EJ stumble into a weird solution wherein EJ reads Nate to sleep.Or: Nate figures out how to deal with the Tyson Barrie trade. He did not think it would involve falling in love with Erik Johnson.
Relationships: Erik Johnson/Nathan MacKinnon
Comments: 74
Kudos: 674





	All Through the Night

**Author's Note:**

> my god, it's been forever. months of fic block, unable to figure out how to deal with the Trade, and this is what my brain decides to blurt out. unbelievable. 
> 
> technically, i'm filling my own prompt here; this was an unclaimed prompt in the last round of the avsfam challenge and it's what kept tugging at my mind as i tried to think of a fic idea i felt i could actually see through. i'm pleased with how it came out; it was an experiment in diving into a hockey RPF relationship through (platonic) intimacy first, instead of just having them fall into bed sexually and then figure out the rest later. it was fun to write, and i hope you like it!! 
> 
> thanks, as always, to emily for talking about this with me and inspiring me to write it, and to bridget for reading it over. <3

Nate hasn’t actually roomed on the road with Tyson for a long while now. Sure, they pushed it past the ELC thing and everyone made fun of them for it but whatever, that was a terrible season and they managed to swallow crushing, despairing losses just a bit easier in the same hotel room. People stopped making too much fun once the words “historically bad” started getting thrown around, and Nate and Tyson kept their road roomie status in peace. 

They did ostensibly make the official split the next season, though. It just made sense. They both had their own grownup houses on their grownup contracts and they didn’t need to do roadie sleepovers anymore. If they were a little quick to volunteer to share in situations where accommodations were mixed up or if they did migrate to each other’s rooms a bit more than anyone else’s then whatever. They’re best friends. That’s what best friends do.

At least, they did until another season later, when Tyson got traded. Now Nate enjoys the peace and quiet of a totally single room. It’s fine. He can throw his shit wherever he wants to; if he wants to fall asleep with three empty Fiji water bottles in bed with him, there’s no one around to judge him. 

He has first and only pick of movies, he doesn’t have to deal with a phone flashlight on across the room when he knocks out hours earlier than Tyson, and when shit gets mixed up and they need people to bunk together, well, that’s someone else’s problem now. It’s totally fine. Best friends are still best friends even if they’re not road roomies anymore, or on the same team, or live in the same country eight months out of the year. 

So Tyson getting traded has absolutely nothing to do with Nate’s sudden, maddening bout of insomnia. Just because it started around the same time doesn’t mean anything; correlation does not equal causation, according to this boring ass stats podcast he’s been listening to in the hopes that it would put him to sleep. 

“Where’d they get Fenwick from?” Nate asks the empty hotel room, and then cranks up the volume on his phone so that gentle nerd sounds drown out the crushing realization that he’s already talking to himself and they’re not even out of the second week of the season.

The Avs have just started their longest road trip of the season, a six game grinder first back east and then ending in St. Louis. Last night, the Penguins handed them their first loss but they’ve still got a point streak going and they’ve just had a nice, light travel and practice day in Florida to shake it off. 

Nate had gotten a good dinner with a bunch of guys, had done some pool time at the hotel with Josty, Cale and JT, and even remembered sunblock. He had a perfectly pleasant day. He’d been excited about the pool time because he’d had some issues sleeping in Washington and then again in Pittsburgh, and swimming always tires him out in a gentler way than hockey does. He likes to lie in bed after a good swim and imagine he can still feel the water around him; it’s better in the ocean but the group that went to the beach wanted to get steaks and the group that stuck around the hotel wanted to get sushi so Nate followed his stomach to the pool. The pool would have the same effect. 

It _should _have the same effect, and Nate had lain in bed for close to an hour with the lights off, the curtains drawn, and his eye mask on waiting for it to happen with no luck. He’d pulled the eye mask off and gone for his phone, which is basically the number one _don’t _on the insomnia list and felt like giving up until he thought of the podcast idea. 

And now it’s close to two hours past when Nate normally goes to sleep when the schedule allows it, three hours past when he passes out the night before a game, and he’s ready to start Googling more solutions. 

What had started as an irritating, slightly worrying problem in preseason has followed Nate into the regular season and he can’t help but feel a little stressed about it. Sleep is Nate’s constant. It’s the cure-all for virtually everything that goes wrong in his life. Homesick? Go to sleep and call home first thing in the morning. Physically sick? Go to sleep and deal with it after a good long rest. Lose a bad game? Get a good 10 hours and wipe the slate clean. Lose like a billion bad games over the course of a nightmare season that seems like it’s never going to end? Sleep it the fuck off, as often and as thoroughly as possible.

After that season, Nate changed a lot about his approach to his own health, his fitness, and preparedness for the game. But getting a ton of sleep was one of the few, steadfast holdovers and he’s devoted to it year-round. He’s taken a lot of shit for it over the years and he doesn’t give a fuck because this is just what he does. He sleeps a lot. He’s good at sleeping.

He has to firmly remind himself of that as he contemplates calling room service and asking them to bring him warm coconut milk. Would coconut milk be okay? Does it have to be cow’s milk to have the same effect? Nate doesn’t do dairy anymore. He frantically Googles for an answer, reads the back-and-forth of the debate on a few different health forums for a while, and then throws his phone onto the bed near his legs in frustration. 

Nate stares at the ceiling. He puts his AirPods carefully on the bedside table, right next to his wallet and where his phone would normally go so he doesn’t forget them, and stares at the ceiling some more. 

He starts to become keenly aware of the faint, low sounds of a hotel full of people. A door closing on the other side of the floor, footsteps down the hall, the distant hum of the elevator. He listens to the sounds around him, trying to catch on anything remotely comforting or regular, something to latch his brain onto and help steer it into sleep. His eyes burn a little, and he closes them, but it doesn’t help.

When Nate sits up, it feels like giving up again. He grabs a hoodie from the corner chair and shrugs it on, pockets his phone and room key, checks his pockets for both of them at the door, and then steps out of his room as quietly as he can in his socks. 

The hotel hallway is carpeted; the light is too bright after the near total darkness of his room and Nate cups his hand over his eyes until they adjust. He stands outside of his room door for a few seconds, contemplating his next move, before turning to the left and walking down to the end of that hallway, not slow or fast. 

He stops in front of a wall that has a giant, generic art print depicting a cerulean sea turtle on it. Then he turns and walks all the way back down the hallway, going past his room to the elevator. Then he turns around once more and does it again. 

It’s a little while and a few laps before Nate realizes he’s listening again. He’s pacing past his teammates’ hotel rooms and he’s listening for them—a bunch of them are probably still awake because they all keep normal hours and not old man hours like Nate proudly does. He passes the room he thinks is Gabe’s and listens carefully and yeah—he can hear the low sound of the TV on through the door. Gabe is up. 

So is Barbs, and Naz, and Sam and Cale, though they quiet quickly when Nate takes a particularly heavy step outside their door. Nate moves on but only a bit, still close enough that he can hear them talking to each other, and he clenches his fists inside the pockets of his hoodie and leans his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. 

Then Nate jumps and lets out a rough yelp when the room door right next to him swings open. 

“Jesus Christ,” EJ says, moving out far enough into the hallway that he can look up and down either side of it and ascertain that Nate’s alone. He shakes his head and gives Nate a bewildered look. “Are you the one stomping back and forth out here? What are you _doing_?” 

EJ’s aggrieved voice, with just a hint of humor and a healthy helping of mockery, is instantly enough to get Nate’s back up. “Screw you, I’m not _stomping_. I don’t even have shoes on.”

“Well you sound like you’re in a marching band, cut it out,” EJ says, completely undeterred. He narrows his eyes at Nate behind his glasses; only the bedside lamp is on behind him, the TV on but muted. “Why are you even awake right now? Josty said you went to bed at 9.” The unspoken _you giant loser _echoes in the air around them, loud and clear; it’s a special talent of EJ’s that makes that kind of thing heard.

“Maybe Josty should mind his own business,” Nate huffs, pulling his hands out of his hoodie to cross his arms over his chest. He pointedly does not answer EJ, taking subtle, shuffling steps back towards his own room, seeing a clear path here where EJ corners him and figures out something’s wrong. 

EJ steps a little further out into the hall, keeping one foot wedged in the door to keep it from closing. “Seriously, you’re not going to explain this? I’m just supposed to accept you lurking out here in the middle of the night, hours after you’re usually unconscious, with no reasoning from you?” He suddenly grins, the expression unfurling across his face like he’s a cartoon character. “Hey, are you sneaking back from someone else’s room?” 

Nate sputters and prays to every one of his Maritime ancestors that his face isn’t coloring; from the look on EJ’s face, his eyes sparkling, his prayers go unheeded. “What? How does that even make sense, why would I—no! I was in my room!” 

“Are you sure?” EJ tilts his head to the side; between his stupid haircut, a little tousled after presumably being in bed, his glasses, and the predatory look on his face, he looks like an owl. Nate scowls at his fake-gentle tone. “No shame in the game buddy, we’re all adults here. Unless—” EJ casts an exaggerated look of horror over at the next door over—Cale and Sam’s room. “Were you sneaking out of the kids’ room?”

“_No_!” Nate says in a whispering yell, probably loud enough that the kids in question could hear it. He moves towards EJ in a swift, rough motion, suddenly terrified of more doors popping open and witnessing Nate out here, because there’s still no explanation he feels willing to give anyone yet. 

With that fear in mind, Nate shoves EJ back into his room and, when EJ clamps down on his arm and doesn’t let go, follows him into it. He grabs the door and shuts it gently behind him, but the snap is still loud and Nate grits his teeth and then bares them at EJ. 

“Shut _up_,” he says, a little louder. EJ laughs in his face.

“Oh I get it now, you’re visiting _all _the rooms—”

“I’m literally going to beat the shit out of you if you don’t shut up—”

“—and honestly I’m flattered, though I have to ask how far down the list I am, like how many rooms have you hit since 9? Are we talking sloppy fourths here, or more than that?”

“I hate you,” Nate says, punctuating his hatred with a hard shove. EJ laughs more, stumbling back towards the bed and dropping down onto it. He flattens his palms out behind him and grins up at Nate, eyes glinting in the low lamplight.

“I’m really not judging here, I just like to know what I’m working with,” EJ says. He puts his hands up as Nate advances on him, his own hands outstretched. EJ’s gesture is placating while Nate’s is aggressive, but it’s EJ who grabs Nate’s arms again and wrestles with him on the bed until Nate finds himself in a headlock, huffing out in frustration because he only got to elbow EJ once and not nearly hard enough.

“Let me go, asshole,” Nate forces out furiously, thrashing around a little to try and break EJ’s hold. “Seriously how are you this strong, where is this shit on the ice, Johnson—”

“Hey now,” EJ says, way too casual for how tightly he’s gripping Nate’s neck. It’s not exactly a small neck, but EJ sounds like he’s chatting someone up on the grocery line. “Be nice. It’s not my fault you’re used to wrestling smaller dudes.” 

Nate feels himself deflate a little; he stops struggling before he quite realizes it, and only picks it up again when he feels EJ stiffen. 

“Hey,” EJ says again, softer now. Nate grits his teeth. “Are you—”

“Are you gonna let me go?” Nate demands, and on his next thrash EJ releases him quickly, letting him sit up next to him on the bed. Nate straightens out his hoodie, runs a quick hand through his hair, and then fixes EJ with a poisonous stare. “I’m going back to my room.”

“What were you doing out in the hall?” EJ asks all in a rush, because he knows Nate always does exactly what he says and he’ll have to get him in another headlock to stop him. 

“Mind your business.” Nate stands up and starts for the door, pointedly ignoring EJ getting up with him.

“You were outside _my _room being weird, so I’d say you were the one that made it my business.”

“Just go to sleep, Erik,” Nate says. He hopes he doesn’t sound as tired as he suddenly feels. As he opens the door and looks back at EJ, still mercifully standing by the bed, the frowning concern on his face likely proves that he does. Whatever. 

EJ, still frowning, points over at the bedside table with the lamp on it. There’s a book lying there, open side down, the spine basically bent in half. “It’s barely midnight, loser. I’m reading. You should try it sometime, maybe you’ll learn something about not lurking alone in hotel hallways and then losing easy wrestling matches to your much stronger and more handsome teammates.” 

Nate rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m no match for your old man strength. Fuck off.”

“You fuck off,” EJ says, and Nate leaves and shuts the door behind him. 

He passes Sam and Cale’s room on his way back and slows down but hears nothing behind the door. Gabe’s TV is off now, Barbs and Naz seem settled, and when Nate gets back in his dark room with his eye mask and his drawn curtains and a bottle of Fiji water on the floor next to the bed, he thinks about EJ reading alone in his room, about the two of them being the only ones still awake. 

Nate picks up the water bottle and puts it on the dresser. Then he gets back in bed and texts Tyson _johnson got me in a headlock tonight , im too rusty man _and then puts his phone facedown on the bedside table; it’s already on Do Not Disturb. He doesn’t pick it up again. 

One of the issues Nate’s facing is that after years and years of getting up early, his body simply doesn’t know how to sleep for any significant length of time past 6 am. He wakes up not having remembered falling asleep but knowing he must have at one point; he wakes up not feeling like he enjoyed any of his sleep, and it’s pretty much the worst. Nate goes to breakfast scowling.

Getting up early every single day of his life doesn’t really do much to make him a morning person, so Nate’s kind of used to a wide berth at team breakfast. There had always been one obvious, singular exception, but most guys let Nate come to them at breakfast and take it from there. Since he’s crabby and tired, he thinks it’s for the best that he sits at a table alone, and _most _guys know the drill there.

It’s not really Burky’s fault for not knowing any better. He’s still new, and Nate’s only ever yelled at him about hockey so far, so he doesn’t quite get it. He sits down across from Nate with a very wide, very white smile, and says, “My number is three tonight. Three shots. I’m gonna do it, man, promise.”

Nate peers at Burky over his oatmeal, brow furrowed. “Three? Seriously? I think you can aim a little higher, what did I tell you?” At this point he knows he sounds crabby, probably the entire, nearly empty room thinks he sounds crabby. But Burky just keeps smiling. 

“Four then. I can do it.”

“Yeah you can. You got it. And next game you can aim for double digits.” When Burky gapes at him, Nate shrugs. “I’ll count attempts, too. Not blocked though.” _Fenwick_ he thinks, and tries not to shudder. He can’t remember having a nightmare last night, probably didn’t sleep enough for one, but if he did it was probably about PDO. 

Burky lights up like a glow lamp over all that and starts happily shoving bacon and eggs into his mouth. Nate stabs at a big chunk of strawberry in his bowl and eats it; he lets Burky chatter away at him and makes sure his breakfast bears the brunt of his crabbiness instead.

That becomes an impossible task when EJ suddenly plops down into the seat next to Burky. 

“Goddamn it,” Nate says, and EJ puts a hand to his chest, mortally wounded. 

“Wow. _Wow_. Good morning to you too.” He gives Nate a big grin, as toothless as it is pure evil. “Sleep well last night?”

“Why are you sitting here?” Nate asks. Burky gives him a baffled look, as if he’s never seen Nate talk to EJ exactly like this dozens of times, nearly all of the time. 

“It’s a free country,” EJ tells him. His plate is piled high with eggs, fruit and meat and he eats like it’s his last meal, the way he does with every meal. Nate crams the very last mouthful of oatmeal he has so he can leave, then chews and swallows and points at EJ with his spoon instead of leaving.

“Gabe is up, he’s over there. Sammy is up. Go sit with your friends.”

“You’re my friend,” EJ says, mouth drooped in exaggerated hurt. He looks at Burky for a second and says, while forking a too large bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth, “You’re my friend too, man.”

Burky beams. He puts his fist out and gets a fistbump from EJ with zero hesitation. “My man! I’m glad you sit with us.”

“I’m not,” Nate says, scowling. “He’s just here to make comments and get a rise out of me.”

“I would never do that,” EJ says. He shakes his head. “Get a rise out of you? Impossible.”

“See? He’s doing it right now.” Nate braces his hands on the table, readies himself to get up. He can just do it, it’s easy and would make the rest of this morning infinitely more peaceful. But he stays sitting. It feels like picking a scab. 

Never one to do anything halfway, Nate then decides to stick a knife in the scab. “So what were you reading last night, nerd?”

Nothing he says to EJ ever has the intended effect. He practically preens and starts telling both of them all about some dumb biography of some dumb US president that no one’s even heard of and how “interesting” and “compelling” it is. Burky hangs on every word and Nate pours most of his energy into not asking Burky if he can read, and the rest of his energy into turning his ire on EJ. 

He does this by putting his head on his arms on the table and letting out loud, obnoxious snoring noises. It’s loud enough to make Josty, newly awake and blinking into his own breakfast, chuckle from a few tables over. “You asked me what I was reading,” EJ says, feigning hurt again only to ruin all of that by adding, “It’s not my fault you couldn’t sleep.”

He says it way, way too smug and, much worse, very loud. Nate jerks his head up, eyes wide and pulse quickening in anger. He’s wondering how many more of EJ’s teeth he can possibly knock out before—

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Gabe asks, materializing next to the Nate’s seat as if in a puff of smoke. He asks in the grave, overly measured tone that one might use to ask “Did the doctor tell you how many months you have left?” Nate wants to run EJ over with the team bus. 

“_No_,” Nate tells Gabe as firmly and as calmly as he can. Gabe responds by sitting down next to him and Nate groans so loudly that they probably hear it in Cuba. 

“Are you sure? I thought I heard people out in the hall last night but I just figured it was guys sneaking in late.”

“Yeah it was,” Nate says at the same time that EJ says, “That was Nate, he was pacing back and forth like a lunatic until I made him go to bed.”

A short silence descends over the table. Rage-induced white noise fills Nate’s head so Gabe’s next exclamation of concern sounds very far away even though his face is like right in front of Nate’s. “Nate, come on, I was up! You should’ve come talk to me, you know my door is always open.” He says it so earnestly, the way he takes almost all clichés so seriously, and Nate has to set aside any and all revenge fantasies against EJ to scramble to put an end to all this. Once Gabe gets on an inspirational sports movie track, it’s impossible to get him off it.

“_No_, no, I wasn’t—it wasn’t like that. I just wasn’t tired enough, it happens on off days sometimes, you know how it is.” Except it never happens to Nate, and so rarely on the road, when there’s travel and running around with the guys. And Gabe knows that, but still—having trouble falling asleep when you’re not hockey-exhausted is totally a thing. Maybe it’s a Nate thing now. 

Gabe nods, face pinched in concern, while EJ continues cramming his breakfast into his smirking mouth like a demon crossed with a vacuum cleaner. It’s Burky who chimes in with, “Oh, I know! That happens to me too. Do you like melatonin?” 

Nate latches onto melatonin like a life preserver. “Oh yeah, I mean—I haven’t tried it but I know guys use it to get into a sleep routine. You take it sometimes?”

“I have the gummies,” Burky tells him. “They’re good. Not so strong, you know?”

“If you need something stronger—” Gabe starts in his mom voice, and Nate rolls his eyes up at the ceiling. 

“What, are you holding?” 

“That’s not a bad idea,” EJ says, and when he gets a death glare from Nate and two baffled looks of Swedish disapproval, he snorts and shakes his head. “I mean—go steal Willy’s weed pen next time you can’t sleep.”

It’s genuinely not a bad suggestion, in general or the robbing Willy part. Neither is Burky’s solution, and Nate resolves to text Andy about it to cover all his bases later. 

But of course Nate doesn’t say that, not to EJ of all people. Instead he raises his chin and says, “Nah, I’ll just keep bothering you,” and EJ laughs at him.

“Sure, keep coming back and getting your ass kicked wrestling. Not so tough without your patented salad bowl move, are ya?” 

“_Erik_,” Gabe says, but Nate had been ready for that. It’s a little easier to hear in the light of day, on the morning of a game, when he has his teammates around him and sunshine spilling across the floor and a morning skate, several sweet potatoes, and good hockey to look forward to. 

Nate feels the weight of his crappy sleep drop from his shoulders as he stands up and pats Gabe on the back. “I guess I need to find some time to get practice in. Why don’t I go for a patented Johnson golf cart ride?” 

“Oh my god,” Gabe says, putting his head in his hands. Nate pats him again and walks off, hearing EJ call insults after him with what would be a shocking voracity and viciousness if Nate didn’t know him so well. He grins as he turns into the lobby and the swear words fade into the morning.

_  
_  
Four shots, two goals for Burky, enough for Nate to shout, “I told you so!” in Burky’s face when he sets up Nate’s OT winner. They spill from a joyous locker room straight onto the team plane where they eat dinner, play cards and play fight in the aisle until the plane is landing and they’re being scooped into their Tampa hotel for the night.

It’s all a wave of fun and winning excitement and pure, real happiness that puts Nate in bed smiling. He puts his eye mask on, snuggles down into the covers, luxuriates in the happy exhaustion rolling over his entire body, and sighs, ready to sleep. This entire day has had all the ingredients of an excellent sleep.

Except he doesn’t sleep. It’s so surprising that it takes him a few minutes to actually register that he’s awake. 

Nate lies there, stubborn, eyes closed, concentrating on breathing evenly. The next time he moves is only to dig out the ear plugs he uses on the plane sometimes, but he gets back into bed in exactly the same position, eye mask affixed, muscles relaxed, physically tired and absolutely positive that his body has no choice but to fall asleep.

It doesn’t happen. He lies there, everything so still and quiet that he could almost, _almost _pretend he’s sleeping, but his brain knows better. That’s the part that won’t shut up, which has faded from _happy-win-team-point-streak _to something darker, formless, which settles over his thoughts and keeps them spinning like a top. 

He doesn’t let himself check the time because he doesn’t want to calculate how many hours he has until he has to wake up; it was already fewer hours than he likes, which is obviously normal on a game schedule, especially on a back-to-back. But even just guessing at the time makes the hours seem frantically few, and Nate feels panicky at the thought, his throat tight and his eyes burning until he realizes he’s squeezing them shut too tight behind the mask.

Nate pulls the eye mask off, pops the ear plugs out, and scrubs his hand over his entire face, furiously brushing away at the moisture gathered at the corners of his eyes. He’s thinking of solutions again; for a moment, his hand hovers over the front of his pajama pants, considering, but he shakes his head and gets up, pretty sure he couldn’t get anything going even if he tried.

He looks at his phone, wincing at the time, then just sits there contemplating his next move. There are more solutions: Burky’s gummies, Willy down the hall, Gabe who told him in no uncertain words after breakfast that he could go to him and hang out if he couldn’t sleep. That’s not really an option; Gabe knows too much somehow, has latched onto this problem like it’s more than simple insomnia, more than just a physiological thing that Nate hasn’t been able to solve on his own but will, of course.

He is so tired. At some point he has to be so tired that he just falls asleep. That’s how bodies work. But the thought of lying here forcibly deprived of all senses until that happens is terrible and it forces Nate off the bed and out into the hallway, listening. 

The hall is much quieter this time, probably because everyone is asleep as they should be. Even the sound of Nate’s feet on the carpet seems unnaturally low and far away, like he’s not actually there. It’s a bit unsettling and he keeps walking, ears reaching for sound, any proof that there’s a teammate awake, even though it becomes clear on the second loop around the hall that he has no intention of actually speaking to any of them. 

Nate tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to wake anyone up. He knows he could, he just won’t. Not on purpose, anyway—a door opens with a creak loud enough to make him jump, guilty and embarrassed, until he sees fucking EJ again. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” EJ says. He’s squinting in the light of the hall, no glasses and hair all flat on one side because he’d absolutely been sleeping. Nate glares at him. 

“Go back to sleep, I’m fine. Just forget it.”

“Fuck off, get in here,” EJ tells him, shaking his head and opening the door wider. The creak is still loud and Nate looks worriedly around the hall but doesn’t move otherwise, not even when EJ barks, “Come _on_, Nate, we don’t have all night.”

Nate doesn’t move, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I’m not wrestling you again.” 

“And I’m not leaving you out here, so either get in my room or get ready to bunk down in the hall.” When Nate still doesn’t move, EJ gives a noisy sigh and says, in a slightly softer voice, “We’ve got a game tomorrow, man.”

Finally, Nate’s body seems to come unstuck and he shuffles into EJ’s room, shoulders raised up to his ears in defeat. EJ follows him, grumbling mean things under his breath, but closes the door with a gentle snap behind them. It’s dark in the room, no lamp and book out this time, and EJ ignores the lights to fumble around for the remote and put the TV on. 

An infomercial lights up Nate’s face, and he stares down at his feet, grasping for something halfway acceptable to say or do here. “I don’t know—”

“Shut up,” EJ says. He sounds impatient, and if it were anyone else Nate thinks he would’ve bolted 20 seconds ago at that tone, embarrassed again. But it’s EJ, so Nate feels his hackles go up, annoyed. EJ was the one who insisted he come in here. He could’ve just let Nate work this out alone; he didn’t have to go out in the hall to get him. 

“You shut up. Why don’t you go to sleep, asshole? You said it, we’ve got a game tomorrow, so—”

“What have you tried so far?” EJ asks him, flopping onto the bed and giving Nate his most unimpressed, _how stupid can you be? _look until Nate sighs and flops next to him. The covers are turned down and the pillow is warm enough behind him that Nate realizes he flopped into EJ’s side, but whatever. That’s not the worst of how dumb this whole situation is.

The _how stupid can you be? _look stays on EJ’s face as Nate stays silent; EJ groans up at the ceiling. “Great, so nothing. Awesome. You’re terrific.”

“Listen, I’m not—I don’t want _gummies _or to bug Gabe or wake up Willy or—”

“And why can’t you count some sheep? Drink warm milk?”

“I don’t do dairy anymore.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Well what do _you _do?” Nate asks, not appreciating how much he can feel himself flushing. 

He’s not expecting a straight answer but that’s EJ, who loves to zig when Nate’s furiously resigned to him zagging. “I already told you, I read. It’s like when you get on the bike for a cooldown after a game, but for your head. Works every time.”

“Really?” 

“Yes, really. You should try it.” EJ tilts his head to the side, thoughtfully. “They did teach you how to read out in Hick Harbor, Nova Scotia, right?” 

“Yeah your _mom _taught me how in between—”

“Yeah, yeah, not your best but I understand why given the circumstances. Seriously, do you want to borrow my book?” EJ leans over to grab at his bag on the floor and pulls out the same worn paperback he’d had out last night, waving it in the air with a raised eyebrow. 

Nate doesn’t know if he’s serious or kidding when he lobs out, “Why don’t you read to me, genius?” 

He decides he’s absolutely kidding during the ensuing silence that falls between them; he’s working out a joke about this being the longest that EJ’s ever shut up but it dies in his throat, stabbed through with awkwardness. He should not have proposed that and of course EJ isn’t reacting right, looking over at him from the side of the bed that’s not even his, because he gave his side up to Nate.

And Nate is in EJ’s fucking bed, in the middle of the night, when everyone’s asleep and they haven’t even wrestled or anything. He needs to get out of here. He can’t get his jokes to land, he can’t even properly decode what is or isn’t a joke, and he needs to sleep so desperately it feels like his hair is tired. 

But EJ says, “Yeah, okay,” and leans over Nate to get his glasses and snap the desk lamp on, sitting up a little on the bed and arranging himself more comfortably. He turns off the TV last thing, clears his throat, and then apparently realizes that Nate is gaping at him. “What? I’ll do it.”

_I was kidding _Nate should say. _I’m fine. I don’t need anyone to read to me like I’m five. I’m going back to my room. _All good things to say, things that should be coming out of his mouth. EJ stares him down, eyes bright and clear and serious behind his glasses, and he somehow looks both impatient and patient at the same time, like he’ll sit here all night eager for Nate to finish twisting himself up into knots and then make a fool of himself in a way that’s inevitable. 

“Okay,” Nate says, raising his chin. EJ gives him a small smile, sharp even in the low, golden lamplight, and looks down at his book. 

“Okay. I finished chapter 13 last night, so—”

“You’re not gonna start from the beginning? I won’t understand the story.”

EJ rolls his eyes, but sighs and flips the book all the way to the beginning, keeping the Air Canada plane napkin he’s using as a bookmark wedged into what’s presumably the start of chapter 14. 

Nate settles down into the bed, his head sunk deep into EJ’s pillow, and just listens as EJ starts reading from the foreword, his voice low but careful. There’s nothing right here—no eye mask, no water bottle within easy reach, and EJ only uses one pillow instead of piling them up like Nate does. But it’s somehow easy to ignore all of that and listen to EJ drone at him about someone named Rutherford B. Hayes, the rumble of his voice tumbling across the bed. 

They’re not touching or anything, but Nate can still feel that EJ is warm, and as he closes his eyes it’s that feeling and EJ’s voice that keep them closed. It’s all reassuring, and while it would be nice if Nate could figure out why he needs to be reassured, and what he needs to be reassured _of_, for the first time in what feels like weeks, he doesn’t care. His brain couldn’t give a fuck what secret ingredient it’s missing to go to sleep. There’s nothing but EJ’s voice and the weight of him on the bed and Rutherford B. Hayes, who was in fact a US president.

“What’s the b stand for?” Nate mumbles. His voice is so low and slurred that it almost surprises him into opening his eyes. EJ’s impatient chuckle kind of takes care of that, though; he can picture the exasperated look on his face, can feel it in the way he lightly pats at his hip.

“Be quiet. Sleep.”

“‘m just asking,” Nate says. EJ’s voice picks up reading again, steady and a little flat, fading slightly, and Nate feels his own breathing even out to it. 

The last thing he’s totally aware of is the feel of EJ leaning a bit closer, whispering, “Birchard,” to him. And then there’s nothing but sleep.  


Nate wakes up to what feels like too much sunlight. It makes his eyes wrench open, unhappily—he’d been sleeping really, really well and he doesn’t want to stop. 

He gropes for his phone and finds it in his pocket, close to dead but alive enough to tell him that it’s almost 7:30 and he sits up so fast his head spins.

“Hey, hey,” EJ says, making Nate’s head spin harder as he remembers where he is and why. EJ is drinking something steaming that presumably came from the Keurig by the minibar, sitting in the desk chair with his feet propped up on the bed, watching a morning show on mute. He’s still in his sleep clothes, like he’d rolled out of bed straight into a cup of coffee, and the way he blinks a little bit in the morning light tells Nate he’s not very deep into it yet. “Relax. You’ve got time.”

“I overslept.”

“It’s 7:30, loser. Calm down.”

“I never sleep that late.” Nate puts his head in his hands, not trying to be dramatic but genuinely distressed. He can’t remember the last time he slept past 6 and didn’t go to sleep drunk out of his mind or _at _6\. “What the fuck, I never—”

“You needed the sleep, and you need to not freak out,” EJ says. His voice is quiet but firm, brooking no argument; he keeps his eyes on Nate as he takes a sip of coffee, then flicks them back to the morning show when Nate drops his hands. “There we go. Make some coffee, relax a bit, then we’ll get food.”

“I’m not—I should go back to my room.” Nate makes moves to do that but stops when EJ rolls his eyes. “What?”

“I feel like you’re going to freak out and make this weird and I’m just saying you shouldn’t do that,” EJ tells him, and Nate feels a glare sliding across his face.

“I’m not freaking out, and this _is _weird, come on! I don’t want anyone seeing me coming out of your room.”

“Don’t be an idiot. No one cares unless you give them something to care about. Just be chill for once in your life.”

“I am completely chill!” Nate says. He snaps his mouth shut when he realizes he kind of yelled. And then he thinks that EJ kind of has a point, and that’s such a revolting thought that he has to escape to the bathroom to deal with it on his own. 

All his shit is still in his room, his phone is going to die, so he really does need to get back there. And for all that he kind of wants to freak out, and wants to freak out alone, when he gets out of the bathroom and sees EJ in the same exact position, sipping his coffee and not breaking his gaze from the TV, still all sleep-rumpled and comfortable and relaxed like this is all easy, like it’s nothing—seeing EJ like that makes him feel like he doesn’t want to leave.

He thinks he could get back into bed and have more good sleep; it had been such a good sleep. But that’s insane and ridiculous. So Nate clears his throat and says, “Look, I have to go brush my teeth and take my vitamins and stuff. So yeah. I’m gonna go.”

EJ shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

“Yeah. I’m not freaking out.”

“Sure.”

“I’m _not_.”

“You snore, by the way, pretty bad,” EJ tells him, the corners of his mouth quirking up as the glare returns to Nate’s face. “I mean, who’s surprised with a beak like that, but—”

“If you fucking tell anyone about this, I will beat the shit out of you.”

“Better be nice to me, then.” There’s a full-on grin on EJ’s face now, mouth wide and toothless, like this is just occurring to him.

“Fuck you, no way. Just keep your mouth shut if you want to keep what little teeth you have left, that’s all.”

“That’s not being very nice, Nate.”

Nate leaves, at first attempting to go with his head held high, and thenstomping out and slamming the door behind him and flipping off the closed door with both hands when he hears EJ laughing behind it. He gets back to his room thankfully without seeing anyone else and goes through his normal morning routine, as normal as can be when he’s almost a full two hours behind schedule. 

It’s fine. He goes downstairs feeling like he slept for even longer than he actually did, which is a welcome change on this road trip. It’s so welcome that he doesn’t even mind Gabe sitting next to him with his nearly-finished breakfast and saying, “So I guess you slept well, huh? I was going to send Mikko up with a mirror to make sure you were breathing,” and he nods at Mikko, who doesn’t acknowledge Gabe or his hypothetical task. 

And Nate eats breakfast thankful that Gabe didn’t do that, that Mikko didn’t somehow find him in EJ’s room, dead asleep and apparently snoring away. He’s more grateful when EJ joins them and only comments on how bright-eyed and well-rested Nate looks, smirking to himself like an idiot but not so obviously that Gabe asks any questions. 

“I did have a good sleep,” Nate says, shrugging and addressing Gabe fully, not even glancing at EJ. “I told you it wasn’t a big deal.”

“I’m glad, man,” Gabe says, and Nate’s glad that Gabe is glad because it means he’ll have him off his back for a while.

And he’s glad, in general, that this thing seems to be solved, even if he doesn’t want to poke at how it was solved very much. For all the shit EJ gives him, Nate doesn’t really think he’ll tell anybody so he’s not worried about that. EJ doesn’t seem like he’s going to bring it up at all, so really it’s no harm, no foul. Nate had trouble sleeping, EJ helped him out with it, and now it’s done with. 

It _should _be done with, and Nate tells himself that it is even though that night, after Josty’s hat trick and another win and a flight to St. Louis and yet another exhausted, late night spill into a new hotel room, he can’t sleep again. It just doesn’t make any sense. There’s no reason why this thing should continue, no reason why he can’t just _sleep_. It’s ridiculous. There’s nothing that makes sense about it. It had been another good day, more good hockey, another win. He’s bone-tired the night after a back-to-back and late night travel, and he should be asleep as soon as he closes his eyes.

This time, Nate doesn’t let himself get up. He lies in bed for what must be hours; he can’t be sure because he refuses to allow himself to check his phone. He lies there under his eye mask and covers, tucked in and comfortable, stilling himself even when he just twitches. 

He doesn’t know how he knows it, but eventually he takes the eye mask off and sees light creeping in past the drawn curtains. Nate takes a deep, shuddery breath and gets up to shower, legs a little wobbly and throat too tight. His eyes sting with exhaustion. He spends the shower thinking more about how this can’t be happening, that it can’t be real, and then swallows hard and tries everything he can think of to make sure none of it’s visible when he goes to meet up with his teammates. 

“Oh man,” Gabe says to him. “You look rough, Nate.” 

“I’m fine,” Nate says automatically. “Just got up too early. Making up for yesterday, I guess.”

He knows Gabe’s not buying it; Gabe’s face is tight, his mouth turned down and eyes fiercely concerned. But he apparently knows Nate well enough to know when to leave things alone. 

It’s a proper scheduled day off in St. Louis. They have nothing but a short team meeting at the hotel and then they’re free to do whatever they want; they’re in St. Louis, so it’s not exactly a list overflowing with possibilities. 

But it’s Willy’s birthday and he wants to go to a spa, and to Nate it feels like his options are either go do that or go freak out about how his brain is apparently broken alone in his hotel room all day, so. He goes to the spa with some of the boys. 

It adds up to another good day, good enough that last night’s sleeplessness starts to feel very far away instead of draped off his shoulders like a too-heavy cape. Okay, yes, Nate falls asleep on the massage table and EJ and Josty give him hell for it but whatever. It’s been so long since he’s gotten a massage that isn’t for sports, given to him by someone that isn’t their team massage therapist, that it totally makes sense. 

Spa days are supposed to be relaxing, so Nate relaxes. He tries not to think about how tired he is and mostly succeeds, though every once in a while he gets a slightly manic feeling that distinctly reminds him of when Talbot’s kid skipped a nap and lost his shit for a solid hour. He feels a real kinship with that baby in this situation, and can’t stop thinking about going back to the hotel and taking a nap.

But if he takes a nap—if he even can, maybe those are broken too—if he takes a nap without a hockey game to suck up more energy, he will never, ever sleep tonight. That’s already in question and he can’t do anything else to put it in jeopardy. If Nate doesn’t sleep tonight, he feels like he literally might die. 

“You look wretched,” EJ tells him when they wind up sitting next to each in the back of their Uber XL, Cale and Josty sitting in the middle with their heads bent over some dumb video on Josty’s phone, and Willy chatting up the driver in the front seat like they’re childhood friends. EJ does a bad job of hiding the amused glee in his voice, but at least he’s not very loud, and he’s even looking at Nate with some semblance of sympathy. 

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nate says, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes, then flipping them open when his head starts to feel a little fuzzy. “I’m great. Thriving. My checkers are all aligned or whatever.”

“Checkers? Like…chakras? Jesus Christ.”

“I said _whatever_. Lay off.”

“You need to get some sleep,” EJ says, his voice even lower. He leans in close and Nate reaches for his well of annoyance, recoils out of habit, and tries not to remember how good it felt to lie in bed next to EJ the other night. EJ’s lips press together. “I’m serious, man. This isn’t good for you.”

“I’m fine. It’s not any of your business.”

“Like hell it isn’t. Come on, reading worked. I’m not going to be an asshole about it if you want to do it again.” Nate gives EJ a very flat, disbelieving look, and EJ rolls his eyes in concession. “Okay, fine. I won’t be _too much _of an asshole if you want to do it again, you got me.”

“Do what again?” Josty asks, eyes glittering over the back of his seat at them. Cale hits him in a clear and perfect _mind your own business _warning and Nate wants to shake his hand and ruffle his hair approvingly. 

“Eyes front, Josty,” Nate barks. Josty just grins at him, sniffing out gossip like a bloodhound.

“No, come on, what are you two doing? Include us.” He smacks Cale’s shoulder hard enough to make him jolt in his seat and go “Ow, stop it Josty!” “Include the rookie or I’ll tell Gabe you’re being jerks.”

Nate opens his mouth to tell him exactly how hard he can go fuck himself, but EJ beats him there. “Hey Josty, what’s the fine for snitching?”

The grin drops immediately from Josty’s face, replaced by outrage. “Hey, no! Come on, I just wanted to know! Don’t be like that.”

“At least part of the fine is getting your stall tagged with _snitch _for sure,” Nate says as if Josty hadn’t said anything. Cale is starting to grin at him, eyes scrunching up. “Right over your nameplate. And rubber rats in your bags. Are you prepared for that?”

“No way, leave me alone, I didn’t even do anything!” Cale is snickering now as Josty flails with panic, reaching all the way towards Nate and EJ as if he can physically stop them from threatening him with this stuff. 

“I think you should probably turn around and quit hassling us if you don’t want to get hit with a _mind your own business _fine too,” EJ tells him gravely. Josty squawks and turns around in his seat so sharply that it makes Cale burst out laughing. “That’s better. I hope you learned something today, Cale.” He says it with all the sincere authority of his inner grade eight teacher; Nate rolls his eyes. 

Cale just keeps laughing, which turns into a shoving match with Josty, which eventually leads to fines for both of them for “disorderly conduct” and Willy apologizing to the Uber driver so cheerfully no one could ever be anything but totally forgiving. 

As Nate gets out of the car, he wonders, as he often has since a certain hilarious scandal that happened the previous season, if they were recorded. He thinks it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if it leaked and everyone could see what a bunch of clowns makes up his team. The hockey world should know what he has to deal with every day, and then they can go back and give him the last two Hart trophies.

He also thinks, through dinner with more teammates, singing Happy Birthday to Willy and chirping him for turning 30 and being ancient, that he’s shaken off EJ for the time being; at least Josty accomplished that. He’s sure of it when he gets back to the hotel and gets ready for bed, and when he’s in bed and can’t sleep again and wondering if it’s actually a good thing that he got rid of that particular annoyance. Certainly it is. There’s no way that whole reading thing could be looked at as a real solution to a problem that shouldn’t even exist, that should hopefully be resolved anytime now. 

Then there’s a knock at Nate’s hotel room door, and the relief that floods him is immense and undeniable and yeah, okay. He didn’t shake EJ, and that’s a good thing, and it’s probably about time to nut up and accept that he needs his teammate to read him a bedtime story to get to sleep. It’s fine. 

EJ’s holding two hands up when Nate opens the door: book in one hand, room key and phone in the other. He’s in his normal pajamas and his glasses and he looks so incredibly comfortable and comforting that Nate has to physically stop himself from leaning into him, which is absolutely horrifying. Nate deals with this horrendous desire by snapping, “What do you want?” as if EJ could be here for any other reason than the obvious one.

EJ says, “I’ll just read until you fall asleep and then get the hell out of here. I don’t particularly want to be caught sneaking out of a kid’s room in the morning anyway,” and Nate abruptly sees red.

“I am _not _a kid, what the fuck.”

“Whatever,” EJ says, and he shoves Nate roughly aside and pushes his way into the room, nearly knocking him over. When Nate moves to physically retaliate, EJ waves his hands in front of his face like he’s trying to stop moving traffic. “Nuh-uh, stop, no aggression. That’s not going to help you sleep. Just get on the bed.”

“Why don’t you suck my—”

“Nate, there’s a game tomorrow, and if you don’t get any sleep you’re going to make yourself sick and you won’t be able to play,” EJ cuts in. His voice is firm and clear and breaks the haze of Nate’s despairing exhaustion, his stinging humiliation, and the anger folded into all of that, pumping from his heart with every beat. He swallows hard, shoulders slumped, and EJ leans into him and puts an arm around him, carefully. “Come on man. It’s just me.”

“Yeah,” Nate sighs, and he gets into bed. 

Once again he forgoes the eye mask, though it doesn’t make too much of a difference because he closes his eyes right away and tries not to open them again. He’s a little tempted when he doesn’t feel EJ get on the bed with him, and cracks them open to peek and sees EJ settling into the armchair near the bed, opening the book in his lap.

“C’mere,” Nate says, because what the hell—he doesn’t totally understand how his brain works but he knows what it wants out of this, at least a little bit. He’s already in this, he might as well embrace the embarrassment. EJ, to his credit, doesn’t say anything but does chuckle a bit as he gets on the bed with Nate, sitting up against the headboard as Nate squirms down into his pile of pillows. 

“Okay. Comfy?”

“Comfy,” Nate confirms, pulling his arm out from where it’s locked under the comforter to give a mock little salute. He stuffs it back down and drapes it across his own stomach, and EJ chuckles again. “Go nuts.”

“Sweet. Okay, we barely got through chapter one before you passed out, so let’s get it going again with chapter two.” EJ seems stupidly eager, even though he’s already read chapter two. Nate rolls his eyes behind his closed eyelids and wonders if that’s EJ’s favorite chapter.

EJ starts reading, voice pitched low and steady. The words themselves are hard to follow because Nate could not begin to care about Rutherford Birchard Hayes but the way EJ reads is almost relentlessly soothing. It’s like all his sharp edges have been sanded over by stunningly boring history, softened out to something gentle and comforting that spreads over Nate like a second blanket. 

Nate relaxes into the sound of EJ’s voice. It doesn’t take long for it to sound far away again, like he’s listening from another room. But EJ’s warmth, the weight of him on the bed, remains as close as ever, and that more than the voice or the words he’s reading becomes the last thing Nate is aware of as he drifts off to sleep, as easily and softly as he ever has in his life. 

And it’s the next thing Nate is aware of, as he wakes up at his regular 6 am timeslot and finds EJ curled up next to him, book abandoned on the bedside table, glasses perched on top of it. He’s snoring lightly and Nate searches deep within himself for that typical feeling of annoyance to flare up, the familiar embarrassment and resentment because EJ stayed with him. 

He can’t find it. Maybe it’s there; maybe it’ll be there when the sun is up and the world isn’t so dim and quiet anymore, when the sharp edges are back and they’re bothering each other like they always do. But for now that feels very far away and Nate doesn’t really mind. 

“It’s just me,” EJ said last night, and Nate closes his eyes again and leans a bit closer to EJ and decides to sink into that concept for a little longer, just until the sun is up. That feels fair.

Neither of them say anything, but it’s quickly understood that this is a road thing, not an at-home thing. Nate has some apprehension that the insomnia, now that it’s a capitalized full-blown Thing, will follow him home as the team makes a stop there before heading back out to Vegas, but it doesn’t. He hasn’t been in the new penthouse for that long and everything is still shiny new but his dog is there and his bed feels right and he sleeps like a rock his first night back, getting in a solid 10 hours before he wakes up to make himself breakfast. 

He takes requisite sunrise pictures at his corner windows, feeling calm and peaceful enough as sunlight streams in across his new place that he can easily remember why he’d made this move. For just him and Cox, this makes sense, and it’s beautiful and luxurious here. He sends the pics out to the various members of the team who’d chirped him for this as proof; nobody has views like that, he’s pretty sure. 

He sends them to Tyson, too. It’s hours later that he hears back and it’s nothing but the enthusiastic appreciation that he’d anticipated. Tyson had been planning parties here from the second Nate talked about maybe looking into buying it. He knows how to spend money way better than Nate does, and that’s pretty much what this place is to him. It sucks that he’d never gotten to revel in it. 

Nate had done a housewarming party of sorts, back in preseason; he’d hired people to decorate and cater and make drinks, and teammates and friends filled his wine rack and gushed over his flooring and all the white quartz everywhere. But it wasn’t like—it was a fun party. It just would’ve been more fun if Tyson had planned it, because every party is better when Tyson’s involved. 

So Nate tries to show off the penthouse to Tyson as much as possible. And it’s not that the other guys aren’t happy for him, or impressed or whatever. But it’s such a Tyson thing to have now, and not sharing it with him is one of the worst and weirdest consequences of the trade. 

He tries not to dwell on it, of course. He doesn’t want to stop being able to sleep here too.

When they head out to Vegas for another road game, they go the day before and enjoy themselves, because it’s Vegas and that’s an accepted part of the NHL schedule now. They rinse away their first loss of the season, their worry over Mikko’s injury, in a shower of glitz and fine dining with plates that go on fire and then bottle service at a club that makes the price of Nate’s penthouse look more reasonable. 

It’s not _too _late when Nate gets back to the hotel, even for him; the game tomorrow is a day game and everyone was fairly conscious of that. He feels too good to even fuck around with trying to sleep on his own and just gets ready for bed and heads down to EJ’s room with all the right stuff this time: his toiletry bag, his charger, an extra pillow tucked under one arm. 

They hadn’t gotten back to the hotel together—EJ had been with Sammy and Barbs and Naz, last that Nate had seen him, helping Sammy sketch out his next tattoo, while Nate was with Gabe and JT, making sure to cut JT off with reminders of the early game even though Josty was texting him drinking dares from across the club. They’d both had their hands full, basically, but now it’s quiet in the hall as guys settle down and Nate knocks on EJ’s door.

He waits, long enough for his stomach to roll a little anxiously. Then he pounds on the door hard, impatient and annoyed, knowing there’s no chance that EJ had beaten him to sleep, that’s never happened in the entire time he’s known EJ.

“That’s not going to work,” EJ’s voice comes from behind him, and Nate jumps and turns around and drops his pillow. EJ laughs and bends to pick it up, still in his going out clothes. His shirt is unbuttoned to the point of indecency and Nate can still smell his cologne under the smells the club. He wrinkles his nose and takes the pillow back from EJ. 

“Where were you?”

“G wanted to get the tattoo tonight,” EJ explains, leaning around Nate to open his room door. “We tried to talk him out of it. Then we followed him to the tattoo shop, stole his wallet, and told the tattoo artist he was 16.” 

“I find it really hard to believe there’s a tattoo artist in Vegas that won’t give a 16-year-old a tattoo,” Nate says, chest fluttering with stupid, stupid relief he has to ignore to stay sane. He sits on EJ’s bed and watches him take off his shoes, arranging them neatly by the closet. He snorts and shakes his head, unbuttoning his sleeves. 

“Yeah, I think he would’ve gone for it, but G was embarrassed enough to back off. Naz promised him that we can all get matching ones if we win the Cup this year and that was enough for him, I guess.” EJ starts unbuttoning his shirt, and Nate blinks and looks up at EJ’s face instead of staring at his hands, his long, deft fingers. 

“I’m not getting a tattoo that Naz picks out,” he says, and this time EJ’s laugh is less of a snort and more of a snicker. 

“Yeah, I don’t blame you, but maybe you won’t care if we win the Cup.” EJ keeps undressing, shirt off now and draped over the back of his desk chair. His belt buckle clinks as his pants drop to the floor and he steps out of them, his pants joining his shirt so that he stands in front of Nate in boxer-briefs and dress socks. 

Nate, who has seen EJ in even less than this, feels himself go weirdly warm. He looks down at the pillow in his lap and pretends to be thinking about the tattoo issue, wrinkling his nose again. “I feel like I probably will care, actually. Maybe.” 

EJ huffs out a laugh, pulling shorts and a t-shirt out of his bag and zipping it closed again. Nate keeps his gaze down as he hears the softer sound of EJ’s underwear hitting the floor too, then berates himself for being an idiot prude and looks up just in time to see EJ’s ass disappearing into the shorts, his long, lean back covered by the t-shirt. He watches EJ head for the bathroom, not even closing the door all the way as he calls out, “Don’t worry man, I won’t let him make us get tramp stamps. It’ll be something classy.”

“No offense, but I don’t really want a tattoo that you pick out either,” Nate says, shaking his head a little to clear it and then getting himself arranged on the bed as EJ’s laughter carries over again. He fluffs out his spare pillow and, with a furtive glace to the bathroom, steals one of EJ’s too so he’s piled up. EJ emerges from the bathroom as Nate gets settled and when he looks over, EJ’s just kind of staring at him from in front of the bathroom door, glasses in hand and eyes a little squinty. 

He blinks when Nate says, “Hey, you ready?” and then puts his glasses on and nods, running his hands through his hair. 

“Yep, I got it. Chapter three awaits.”

“Is it killing you to go through chapters this slow?” Nate asks as EJ finalizes his bedroom routine, takes off his socks and his watch last thing and grabs up the book to get in bed next to Nate. He sits up again, making a face over at Nate and stealing back one of the pillows so he can sit up more comfortably. Nate takes a swipe at him, lazy and without feeling, and EJ just grabs his wrist and gently sets it down on Nate’s chest.

“It’s fine,” EJ says, shrugging. “I’ve already read it so what does it matter to me? Just relax.” He pats Nate’s wrist and then opens up the book to the right page and starts reading. 

This time, Nate keeps his eyes open for a little while. He’s not sure why but he finds his eyes catching on EJ’s hands again: the back of his hand holding the book open, his thumb pressed in the middle, his long fingers turning pages. It’s as ordinary a position as unbuttoning a shirt, two things he’s seen EJ do a billion times. 

He honestly can’t count how many times his eyes have skated over EJ reading on the plane or with a newspaper open in the locker room; he’d always been focused on chirping EJ for being the last person alive to still read newspapers or just generally being a huge nerd. It feels silly now that that’s what seemed important, considering the position he’s in now. 

Now there’s a weird feeling like Nate doesn’t want to miss it, which is extremely dumb. Thankfully EJ is too absorbed in the book he’s already read once to notice Nate eyeing his hands up like a creep. Nate squirms down a bit more into the covers, the cool recirculated hotel room air raising goosebumps across his skin, and EJ doesn’t skip a beat, happily reading to Nate about Hayes’ childhood as if recounting the fabled childhood of a family friend.

Nate’s weirdness means they make it through almost three whole chapters before he falls asleep, but he doesn’t really mind. It’s still a good, solid sleep, with EJ’s alarm going off just a minute after Nate opens his eyes thanks to the early game. 

That means he sees EJ wake up, grumbling into his single pillow so that Nate realizes that after he’d fallen asleep, EJ had slipped that stolen and stolen-back pillow into Nate’s pile. Nate sinks down into that warm feeling, his stomach fluttering with an unfamiliar brand of happiness that he can barely conceptualize. 

“Would you be horrified if I hit snooze?” EJ asks into the pillow, voice rough and low and sweet with sleepiness. Nate curls onto his side and meets EJ’s barely opened eyes, thin slits of hazy blue irises peering across the bed at him. He shakes his head and buries it deeper into his pillow pile, warm and pleased. 

Nate hasn’t hit snooze since he was a little kid, maybe not even then, always too eager to get through breakfast or school or whatever was in front of hockey. He still feels that excitement, especially in a season like this, but he also feels like the season is long and good hockey is never a reason to waste some good sleep. 

EJ apparently agrees, snores rumbling softly from his side of the bed. Nate opens his eyes a little more, drifting and watching his teammate steal another few minutes of sleep, rested in a way he hasn’t been for what feels like a long time. 

Nate has shared beds with other guys before, platonically and otherwise. He’s shared beds with _teammates _before; it’s really not all that strange in their line of work, and it’s nothing to kick up a fuss about. He’s done it drunk, sober, straight out of a pool, clothed, partially clothed, and not clothed at all. The reading thing just means he’s doing it with a bit more regularity, but it’s not a big deal. It’s really not. 

_It’s just EJ_ becomes Nate’s mantra as October slips into November, which brings with it more road trips, more injuries, more pressure and, with mixed feelings, an eye fixed to a certain return for the November 23rd game in Denver. 

“Bet you’ve got that game circled on your calendar,” Gabe says when Nate goes over with a few other guys to meet his baby. Gabe has a walking boot propped up on his coffee table, a stained burp cloth over his shoulder, and Linnea in his arms, tiny and pink and bleary-eyed. Everyone is kind of surrounding Gabe and cooing at her, but he hasn’t relinquished her yet. 

Nate rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I can’t wait for your birthday, man. Most important day of the year for me.”

“I mean, of course it is, it should be for everyone.” Gabe raises his voice so that it carries over to where Cale had gone to give a slightly jealous Zoey some attention. “Did you let the rookies know about my present?” 

“I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” EJ says just as loudly. None of them miss Cale’s head whipping around, eyes slightly widened, but they steadfastly ignore it. 

Gabe’s voice goes low again. “And you know that’s not what I mean, Nate.”

Nate hunches his shoulders. “What, you’re not excited to see him again too? I’m excited.”

“Yeah, you look thrilled.” Gabe raises an eyebrow at him. He smells like diaper cream and new baby and Nate does not want to take this from him. 

“Listen, I should get—”

“Are you going to let us any of us hold that baby or not?” EJ asks loudly, before Nate can make his graceful exit. EJ and Gabe have some silent conversation with their eyes and their eyebrows and then Gabe sighs. “Good. Give the baby to Nate.” 

“Uh,” Nate says, but Gabe just gets up and plants Linnea in Nate’s arms. “Am I holding her right?” he asks immediately, trying not to panic, and neither Gabe nor EJ look very impressed with him. 

“You’re holding her fine, the babysitting instincts kicked right in,” Gabe says, and he winks exaggeratedly. “Those will come in handy for me, eh?” 

“In your dreams,” Nate says, but he can’t really argue anymore because Linnea coos in his arms and gives a little squirm and then settles down like she doesn’t have a single care in the world. She’s sleeping in the next moment, tiny lips pursed together under her equally tiny nose, and Nate feels every part of him melt, totally enraptured. 

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” EJ says, his voice weirdly soft, and when Nate finally manages to look up again, EJ’s looking at him and the baby like he’s equally enraptured. With the baby, Nate mentally insists maybe a second too late. He looks back down at Linnea, which feels like both the safer and smarter move. 

It’s not long before the other guys are clamoring for their turn to hold her, JT and Josty roughing out a harrowing game of rock-paper-scissors which JT wins only for EJ to shove past them both, put his arms out, and say, “Give her here,” in a tone that brooks no argument. 

Nate leans in to EJ to pass him the baby very gently, watching Linnea’s face. It makes no movement even once the transfer is complete; she is sleeping just as peacefully in EJ’s arms as she’d been in Nate’s. Nate once again finds himself feeling a true kinship with a baby and goes to join Cale and Zoey to shake himself out of it. 

The Avs hit the road again for another long trip through Western Canada and Minnesota; when they get back home, it’ll be the 23rd, Gabe’s birthday and the Leafs game. As a result of the long trip, Nate and EJ finish the Rutherford Birchard Hayes book and EJ pulls a book about FDR out of his bag with a flourish. Nate groans from his spot in bed. 

“We’re in Canada. Don’t you know any books about famous Canadians?”

EJ looks exaggeratedly puzzled as he settles in next to Nate in the usual way. He’d just gotten out of the shower when Nate showed up that night; his hair is dark and wet and he smells like aftershave and Dove bar soap. Nate pushes his face into his pillow to breathe in the scent of plain, bland hotel linens instead. 

“There are famous Canadians?” EJ asks, and then Nate has to pick his head up and shove at EJ until they’re both laughing breathlessly in bed together. Then they stop and get serious about the reading, in the usual way. 

Nate closes his eyes and lets the familiar sound of EJ’s voice relax him. He half-listens to the actual words, trying not to really retain anything out of spite, but soon hears something that makes his eyes flip open. “Hey, wait a second.”

EJ jumps slightly, looking at Nate with wide eyes. “Everything okay?” Nate almost never interrupts EJ’s reading now, mostly because he’s usually half-asleep for most of it, but also because he truly doesn’t ever care enough about the subject matter to interject with any commentary. 

That’s suddenly changed when Nate says, “Oak Island. That’s in Nova Scotia, right? The buried treasure?”

EJ frowns. Nate watches his eyes move rapidly across the page, flipping to the next one and reading ahead until Nate flicks his arm. “Ow, stop. Yeah I think so, but there’s not much about it here, just that FDR was always interested in the Oak Island mystery. I guess a lot of people were.” He grins at Nate. “There you go, a famous Canadian _place_. How’s that?”

“Shut up,” Nate says, reaching for his phone and ignoring EJ’s protest. He brings up the Oak Island mystery on Wikipedia and scrolls until he sees FDR’s name pop up. “Dude, he went there to look for the treasure! He was in the Old Gold Salvage group!” 

“Give me that,” EJ says, and Nate sits up and leans in so EJ can see his screen too. They sit with their heads together, EJ’s shower-damp temple touching Nate’s, silently reading the same article section, until EJ snorts. “Okay but he didn’t find anything. No one did forever. Big deal, right?”

“Yeah but it’s a _mystery_, and clearly it was a big deal if your boy FDR was obsessed with it for the rest of his life,” Nate says. “And it’s cool there, I went on a tour once. Have you ever read about it?”

“First of all, don’t call FDR my boy, I have an academic interest—and no, I’ve never read about it. It sounds like a bust to me anyway. Now, do you want to read this thing with me or not?” EJ waves his FDR book in the air impatiently. Nate rolls his eyes and flops down again, pulling the covers up high and smoothing over them with his hands. 

“Fine, go ahead. Read about your boring presidents from your boring country and put me to sleep.”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” EJ gets a smack on the thigh for that; he jumps and laughs, smacking Nate back on the stomach, then keeping his arm stretched over him to stop a wrestling match from breaking out. 

Nate settles in, then falls asleep in the usual way, not retaining a single thing about FDR. He can barely remember what FDR stands for as he drifts off. But he dreams about diving for treasure, dropping down a long, dark shaft into presumably Nova Scotia waters. He feels around in the darkness for treasure, blinking around to catch his gaze on anything glittering. 

But when he looks up again all he can see is EJ at the top of the shaft, watching him sink deeper with a worried frown. He reaches out and Nate wakes up in darkness, EJ curled up next to him. His face is smoothed out in sleep, worry-free, just barely visible because they’re sleeping so close together.

He doesn’t bother checking the time, just stays exactly as close as he is and falls into another sleep, this one without any dreams. 

In Minnesota, the last night of the road trip, EJ comes back to the hotel and goes to Nate’s room after dinner with his family. Nate waits in bed while EJ changes; he’d dropped his bag off in Nate’s room earlier that day, to “save time”, and Nate ignores the squirmy delight he takes in EJ not even bothering with his own room on the road, like there’s no point in pretending they don’t bunk together every night now. He’s still not examining why that’s so delightful; this is still all about insomnia. It’s still just EJ. 

And then EJ pulls a completely new book out of his bag. Nate frowns in confusion; they weren’t even halfway through the FDR snoozefest, and EJ always insists on reading books through, even if he hates them. He can’t think of anything they’d read that would make EJ dip out early on it. 

“Hey, what’s—” And EJ tosses the book on Nate’s chest. He seems a weird mix of apprehensive and defiant, his shoulders tight around his ears and his chin raised. Nate mouths _weirdo _at him and looks at the book cover. “_The Curse of Oak Island_,” Nate reads out loud. And then he starts to grin widely. “Oh my god.”

“Shut up.”

“Did you go out and buy this?” Nate thinks about it. “_Today_?” 

“Shut your trap or we’ll go back to FDR and I’ll flush this down the toilet.” EJ’s pink in the face and Nate feels like his heart is too big for his chest, swelling with something like—and he’s too fond and amused to do anything but lean into the feeling this time, to let it slide over him until he feels like he’s got his head under the covers and it’s dark and warm and, yeah. EJ’s under there too.

“No way,” Nate says, gripping the book in his hands tightly. “Get over here and start reading, I need to hear this.”

“Whatever,” EJ says, but he gets on the bed quickly and positions himself like normal, propped against the headboard and a few pillows. He plucks the book out of Nate’s hands and frowns down at it. “This guy isn’t even a historian, he just worked on the show they did about this. So prepare for this thing to be full of crap, just warning you.”

“I don’t care, read it,” Nate says. He leans in close, scoots his pillow closer—close enough that EJ pulls his disapproving gaze away from the book to peer down at Nate. “What?”

“Nothing,” EJ says. He has a small smile on his face; he ruffles Nate’s hair, petting him like a dog, and while Nate’s second instinct is to scowl and jerk away and maybe hit EJ in retaliation, his first instinct is to just—settle. He keeps his head where it is, tucked in near the side of EJ’s lower torso, under his hand and on top of the pillow. 

EJ makes a soft, slightly confused noise and takes his hand back, and Nate can feel his gaze on him but he ignores it. Yeah, maybe he’s not following a certain script but he finds himself unable to care. He’s happy, as he often is with EJ, and he really doesn’t have the patience anymore to put any qualifiers on his happiness. If this season has taught him anything, if this reading thing has, if the trade did, it’s how to lean in to the good moments while he has them. 

“Read, come on,” Nate says, and after another beat of silence, EJ does. 

For the first time since EJ started reading to him, Nate finds himself hanging onto EJ’s every word. He finds himself fighting sleep after a while, yawning into a closed fist and jerking his eyes open every few minutes, and he keeps going like that until EJ catches him and sets the book down. “Nate.”

“No, hey, keep reading.”

“It’s late.” EJ peeks at his phone and swears softly under his breath. “It’s _really _late, especially for you. Let’s go to sleep.” 

“But I want to know what happens, I want—” 

“We’ll pick it up again next time.” EJ’s smiling that small smile at him again. “If you stay up late reading with me, that defeats the entire purpose of this, right? You need to get some sleep. _I _need to get some sleep.”

Nate’s head kind of swims to remember the original purpose of this. Right in that moment, it’s hard to imagine the purpose being anything but just being close to EJ. His heart thuds with that idea, his fingers tightening in the covers, but he finally nods and concedes because technically, EJ’s right; it’s late and he has to sleep. 

“Fine, we’ll go to sleep, grandpa.” 

EJ snorts and takes his glasses off, setting the book aside too. He pulls one of the pillows out from behind him and hands it to Nate, then snaps off the lamp. “Goodnight, Nate.”

“Night, EJ.” 

They settle. Nate closes his eyes; he’s tired enough that he’s sure he’ll have no issue, even as his mind still races thinking about the Oak Island book, thinking about EJ finding it for him and buying it specifically to read to him. None of that gets quieted at all when EJ asks, barely above a gravely whisper, “Can you sleep okay without me reading? I can get the FDR book if you need it.”

He sounds tired, and Nate swallows hard. He whispers back, “I’m fine,” and runs his hand down EJ’s arm, slow and careful. He feels EJ’s other hand cover his and expects to be batted away, or pushed or for laughter to float out from EJ’s mouth, but none of that happens. 

EJ just whispers, “Okay, man,” and keeps his hand where it is, a gentle weight that slackens slightly as EJ falls asleep, warm and anchoring. Nate edges just that bit closer until his forehead brushes against EJ’s shoulder, and falls asleep to the sound of EJ’s breathing, the familiar scent of his clothes, and the warmth of his body in the places where they touch.

When they wake up again the next morning, Nate’s moved even further, his face having traveled to EJ’s chest, cheek pillowed on his t-shirt. EJ is awake judging by his breathing but neither of them move for a while. Nate hadn’t gotten as much sleep as he’s been getting of late but he feels like he could get up and run a marathon, play hockey for 12 hours straight, crush a sand dune race in record time. 

Their legs are tangled together, and in a comfortably unspoken kind of way they agree to start getting untangled. There’s a moment when they’re both sitting on the bed, side by side and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, when they look at each other and Nate thinks, maybe, that—

“You want the bathroom first?” EJ asks him, and Nate blinks until that moment feels like it’s totally gone. He nods, needing to get his bearings, and when he gets out of the bathroom EJ and his bag are gone, back to his own unused room. Nate tries not to feel disappointed and drops down into EJ’s side of the bed. 

It’s still warm. 

The Leafs get into Denver the night before their game, in the windstorm of a coaching change, and it’s pretty much horrible. There’s not a bit of it that Nate enjoys. It’s awful that he’s having dinner with Tyson, that the way he’s seeing him again for the first time in months is at a dinner with a bunch of Nate’s teammates because Tyson is on another team. 

He can’t appreciate seeing Tyson because none of this should be like this. He and Tyson should’ve spent tonight watching a movie, in Tyson’s den or in the new penthouse, eating veggie sticks and ice cream respectively. They should have first carpooled to practice together, then carpooled to morning skate tomorrow. Ralph should be here, showing his belly to Cox and getting chased around Tyson’s yard. It’s all wrong that he can talk to Tyson pretty much every day of his life and then see him and it’s like this, just constant reminders that the person that he used to spend 70% of his waking hours with doesn’t live here anymore.

“It’s a good thing I know you, or I’d be insulted,” Tyson tells him at dinner, the fourth or fifth time Nate has simply grunted in response to a funny story about some miscellaneous Leafs player Nate doesn’t care about. “How are you handling this worse than I am? I’m the one that got traded.” 

A few of the newer guys around them look aghast, but Gabe and EJ are rolling their eyes and Nate just snorts because Tyson has said that to him approximately 10 billion times since July. It’s a fair point to make, but it’s not going to change Nate’s attitude anytime soon. And just because it’s not manifesting in insomnia so much anymore doesn’t mean it’s not still there. 

“I’m just not going to get over it,” Nate says, which makes the peanut gallery groan. “It’s stupid, that’s all. I’m just being honest. It’s not—it’s stupid.”

Tyson just smiles at him, like he knows that Nate’s barely scratching the surface of how emotional he is, how that’s about all he can articulate in polite company, and that they’re still best friends anyway. “Okay, Dogg.”

“Good, as long as we’re on the same page. So how does Emma like Naz’s condo? Has she gotten banned from an LCBO yet?” 

It’s a clumsy subject change that they all allow because Nate could rant. He could rant more when there’s not even any time to go back to the penthouse, because Tyson wants to meet the baby and Nate guesses that should take priority, but he’s still feeling mutinous when he joins the smaller group headed back to Gabe’s. 

“You should drive me back to the hotel,” Tyson says, and Nate almost says no out of pure contrariness, then realizes he should probably take a step back and get a hold of himself for a little while. 

“Yeah, okay,” Nate says, and they leave together. Then he drives Tyson far out of the way of the hotel; when Tyson makes stupid noises about curfew, Nate says, “Fuck curfew,” and turns his music up loud over Tyson’s protests. 

The protests die when they hit a Dairy Queen. Tyson happily eats his Blizzard as Nate drives them out farther, no real destination in mind, just _away_, and he almost jerks the car off the road when Tyson says, “So are you kidnapping me to try to gain some advantage in the game tomorrow? Because I gotta say, with the way I’ve been playing, I’m not sure this isn’t addition by subtraction—”

“Shut _up_,” Nate basically yells, slamming his hands against the steering wheel for good measure. He pulls the car into the empty parking lot of a strip mall, somewhere outside the city proper, and throws it into park in disgust. “Don’t talk like that, I mean it Tyson.”

Tyson lets the Blizzard spoon sit in his mouth for a moment as he looks over at Nate with wide eyes. “You good?”

“I hate this,” Nate says. He punches his music off, breathing harshly. 

In typical fashion, Tyson laughs a little. “Yeah, I got that. Tough luck, buddy. Shit like this happens, it’s why hockey is the worst.” 

“Hockey isn’t the worst,” Nate says automatically. Then he shakes his head. “But this shit, exactly this, this is the worst. This _sucks_.” 

Tyson sighs and puts his Blizzard down in the cup holder between them. “Yeah, it does. It really, really does.” The last part is said through a laugh, even though nothing’s funny. “But whatever. Life goes on.” He accompanies this with an overly dramatic sigh, and Nate laughs despite himself.

“Does it have to?” Nate isn’t really someone who’s afraid of change. God knows he’s seen a ton of it as an Av, seen the backs of so many friends and teammates. But he never imagined that it would happen with _this _friend. It still doesn’t feel real. Admitting that he’s dealing with it poorly is accepting that it’s real, and he just doesn’t know how to do that yet. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Tyson says, which is true enough. “Yes it has to. And if you didn’t bring me out here to kill me because if you can’t have me then Toronto can’t either, why don’t we talk about what I wanted to talk about?”

“What did you want to talk about?” Nate asks warily. 

Then he almost throws the Blizzard at Tyson when Tyson says, “Oh I don’t know. How about the fact that you’re apparently banging EJ?” 

“I am _not_,” Nate screeches, hand full-on twitching towards the Blizzard, but Tyson ignores him to keep talking, so painfully familiar that Nate’s chest would ache if it wasn’t devoting full attention to keeping his heart from beating out of it. 

“I don’t know what’s more insulting, the fact that I leave and you finally blossom into a hotel room-hopping deviant or that I had to first hear about it from _Josty_, the lesser Tyson. No, I know, it’s definitely that I had to hear about it from that clown, how could you not tell me, we’re supposed to be best _friends_—”

“I am not banging EJ,” Nate says, shoving Tyson hard so he stops talking and listens. “I’m not, we’re not—it’s not like that.”

Tyson finally takes a breath, looking at Nate carefully before asking in a deadly serious voice, “Then what’s it like?”

Nate thinks about it. He turns over how honest he wants to be in his mind, and then thinks that if he can’t be honest with Tyson, then there’s literally no one in the world that he can be honest with, and that’s way too sad to contemplate. “We’re not hooking up, I promise. But—I think I’m into him.”

He doesn’t know if he’d been expecting a thoughtful, careful response; if he was, he’s an idiot. Tyson bursts into laughter, repeating “_Into him_, what are you, 12?” and laughs his ass off until Nate shoves him again. Then he keeps laughing but nods quickly and says, “Okay, all right, so you just _want _to bang EJ, I guess that’s better—” but cuts off when Nate shakes his head.

“No, it’s not just that. I—” He doesn’t want to use the word _love_, not yet, but he’s been thinking about it lately, testing it out, pressing the feeling against the inside of his ribcage. “I have, you know. Feelings for him.” 

Now Tyson gets serious. He stops laughing and looks closely at Nate’s face, staring until Nate gets annoyed and puts his face in his hands. “Oh man.”

“Stop.” 

“This is serious,” Tyson says. It sounds stupid coming from him, but he’s right; this isn’t your everyday average _I want to suck my teammate’s dick maybe_. There’s feelings involved that need to be considered. “Have you talked to him at all?” 

Nate rolls his eyes, and Tyson chuckles. “Okay, that’s a no, sorry I asked. Are you _going _to talk to him at all?” 

He thinks about that at least. It seems like the logical next step, and he’s not actually as terrified as he maybe should be. It’s like—they play a sport that’s all about sharing space and time and nakedness and routines. That’s part of their jobs. But now Nate and EJ have been doing that by choice, on purpose, with just each other, and that’s—it means something. He’s like 90% sure it does, to the both of them. 

It kind of feels like backing into something from the wrong direction than hockey players usually do it. He’d never really thought about having sex with EJ until he realized how good it was to be close to him, and now he wants to be close on that level too. The only thing left is to figure out if EJ wants that too. 

So Nate sighs and says, “Yeah, I should talk to him, right?”

“Uh, yeah, you should.” He’s back to studying Nate’s face, frowning when he apparently doesn’t see what he’s looking for. “Like, what’s the worst that could happen? It’s just EJ, right?”

Nate grins, grateful as always for reassurances he doesn’t even need. “That’s exactly right. That’s the point. It’s just EJ.” That makes him feel warm and a little fuzzy, like he’s just waking up from a good sleep.

Tyson apparently doesn’t miss _that _on his face. “Oh, gross. That’s gross. You’re so into him. You’d better talk to him quick. Before, uh.” Tyson’s face changes then, shifty in a way that Nate is immediately suspicious of.

“Before what?” 

“Before, you know—look. Most of the guys think you’re doing it, okay?” 

Nate feels the warmth and fuzziness instantly leave him. “They _what_?”

“Yeah, apparently staying in each other’s room every night on the road isn’t subtle enough,” Tyson says, rolling his eyes. “What were you even _doing_ if you weren’t banging?” 

“We were—we just—” Nate scrambles for a minute. He doesn’t think it would be all bad if he explained to Tyson what was going on, but he’d need to head off a lot of kink jokes at the pass because Tyson’s brain is a scary place. And he thinks about Tyson saying for the trillionth time “I’m the one that got traded,” when he hears how Nate has been coping and decides against that. He can let Tyson’s scary brain do some imagining. The reading sessions are sacred. “It doesn’t matter. Who thinks we’re banging?” 

Tyson is quiet, guiltily so. That mostly answers Nate’s question but he still says, dangerously, “Tyson…”

“Gabe told me he was thinking of talking to EJ about it,” Tyson says all in a rush. Nate smacks his fist against the steering wheel; he accidentally honks the horn and Tyson jumps about a foot in his seat. “I’m sorry! I told him that was a bad idea but it’s fucking Gabe, you know how he is. He’s been worried about you and I think he’s extra worried about you now that he’s out and not around as much, plus on top of that he’s worried about EJ—”

“Why is he worried about EJ?” Nate asks, wounded. Does Gabe really think he’d do anything to hurt EJ? 

“I mean, it’s EJ. He doesn’t need any help making a mess of stuff for himself. Maybe he’s afraid EJ will drive a golf cart off the roof of your penthouse, I don’t fucking know. But I’m just saying, he’s in this now, so the sooner you can sort things out with EJ—”

“The sooner I can tell Gabe to take all his worry and shove it up his sorry—”

“Hey now, that’s Linnea’s dad you’re talking about.” There’s a pause, and then they both start laughing, way too hard for how not funny that remark was. But it feels cathartic, a little freeing; Nate finds himself eyeing up the steadily melting Blizzard in the cup holder and, feeling crazy, knocks back a cold gulp of it. “Whoa! You know there’s dairy in that, right?”

“I know,” Nate says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he asks, “Why is Gabe talking to you about how he’s worried about me?” 

“Again, it’s fucking Gabe. You know how he is.” Tyson smiles at him, small and knowing, and reaches across to shove his shoulder lightly. “I’m not worried about you, though.”

“No?” Nate works hard to keep the break out of his voice as his emotions bubble up again.

Tyson shakes his head. “Nope. You’re gonna be fine, bro. You’re my best friend. You’re a superhero. And I’m the one that got traded, so get the fuck over it.” He appears to think about it though, suddenly looking grave. “I mean, maybe I should be worried, because I’ve been gone for two months and you’ve gone and gotten all googly-eyed over EJ, of all people—” 

“Stop it,” Nate says, laughing a little shakily. He rubs his hands over his suddenly itchy eyes and shoves Tyson back. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s not—it’s been hard.”

“I know. I mean, same.” The _same _is said so simply, fake cheer not truly hiding the depths of sadness hidden below it, the hurt and shock that still lingers for both of them but especially Tyson, who isn’t actually as good at feeling his feelings as Nate is. 

“It’s gonna get better though,” Nate says, feeling more comfortable in this role, the one that’s sure that shit is going to work out. Tyson raises the melted Blizzard between them in a toast, tapping it against Nate’s outstretched fist.

“Yeah, I’ll drink to that.” And then he tries to chug the rest of the Blizzard and coughs it all over Nate’s dashboard and windshield, so Nate screams at him and jumps out of the car to avoid getting hit with projectile cookie dough and yeah. It’s like he never left. 

Resolving to talk to EJ and actually talking to him are two totally separate things, especially when convenient opportunity to talk to him is suddenly scarce. EJ gets injured in the game against Toronto, on a hit from Kerf of all people, and when he’s not conspiring to shoot peanuts at the Leafs’ team plane, he’s off getting scans and going to doctor appointments and phasing into the Injured EJ routine, which is sadly a little too familiar by now. 

Nate decides to be patient. EJ hadn’t been treating him weirdly or anything so it seems as if Gabe hadn’t gotten to him yet. And they’re not—this whole thing happened on the road. It feels weird to take it to their home turf, and he doesn’t want to force it at a time where EJ might not feel all that comfortable. 

He’s so preoccupied with the notion of talking to EJ about their feelings that he doesn’t quite comprehend that EJ won’t be traveling with them until it’s too late; they’re in Chicago the night before the start of their home-and-home, EJ’s not there, and Nate’s going to need to sleep.

He tries not to worry too much about it, deciding that had to be half the issue when this whole thing started. He goes out to dinner with Burky and Donny, thinking of all the liney dates Gabe took him and Mikko on last year and how much it helps to be real friends with the guys you play with. There’s teammate-friends and then there’s real friends, and maybe Nate doesn’t have enough of the second kind. 

Nate goes back to the hotel with them reasonably early. He goes through his normal bedtime routine, brushing his teeth carefully because he put enough money into them. He fluffs all his pillows, a decent pile, trying not to miss the extra one he always stole from EJ. It’s different from missing Tyson, he tells himself. EJ’s back in Denver. He’ll be healthy soon and join the team and everything will go back to normal. 

Finally, eye mask in hand, Nate gets into bed with a sigh. He fiddles with the mask contemplatively, trying to decide whether he needs it; it’s been so long since he’s wanted it. Maybe that should’ve been his first clue: how badly he’d wanted visual evidence of EJ just being kind to him on Nate’s own terms. Maybe he was always doomed to feel like this from the second EJ first offered him his book to read. 

His phone going off startles him out of thought, and Nate drops the eye mask to pick it up. He’s a little worried—his parents are the only ones that ever call him, and they know what time he goes to bed better than anyone—but his heart flips over when he sees EJ’s name on the screen. He answers the call and puts it on speaker, heart doing more flips. “Uh. Hello?”

“Hey,” EJ says, sounding as unsure and a little shaky as Nate feels.

“Hey. Everything okay?” It occurs to him distantly that maybe something _is _wrong and he feels some panic rise, but EJ is quick to answer.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, I’m just—I was thinking of—you know.” Nate doesn’t answer, still a little baffled, and EJ sighs. “God you are dumb as shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I was thinking you might have trouble sleeping, so I called to—I mean, we can keep going with the Oak Island book. If you want.” 

Nate’s heart stops doing flips because it’s melted into a sticky puddle all over his chest. Nate’s whole body seems to melt with it, relaxing back into the sheets, sinking into the pillow pile, tension he hadn’t even realized he was carrying dropping through the hotel room carpet. He wonders if EJ can hear the giant grin in his voice when he says, “Yeah, that’d be cool, man,” and decides he doesn’t care if he can. He wants to show it to him, and resolves to do that when he gets back in Denver. 

“Cool,” EJ echoes, and Nate hears the rustling of sheets, like EJ’s settling into bed too. “Comfy?” EJ asks, right on cue, and Nate couldn’t possibly get any comfier, but he moves around a little, too. 

“Yep,” he says softly. He sets his phone on his chest and lets EJ’s voice flow through it like the best kind of lullaby. For the first time in maybe his entire life, he can’t wait to get through these next two games and get back home. 

On a sunny, cold morning in December, Nate gets up early as usual. He had told EJ he wanted to come over for lunch and that’s hours away; it feels like more, with how excited he is. He busies himself with putting together breakfast, drinking coffee, walking Cox to Pepsi Center and back, and then decides that maybe the two of them can go for a drive.

Cox is thrilled, barking unrestrained happiness with his head out the window of Nate’s car. Nate laughs watching him. He pulls over near a park and digs a ball out of the trunk and runs around with him, shouting out commands in terrible German, breathing in cold, crisp air until his lungs hurt. 

When they get back in the car, Nate cranks the heat up so he can keep the window open for Cox and keeps driving. He finds himself in Wash Park, passing by his own house, still empty and waiting for when he’s ready for it again. He takes one turn and then another and finds himself in front of another familiar house. He slows to a stop, out of instinct or habit or just self-punishment, and sits outside for a while. 

Nate looks at the front porch and thinks about the porch swing Tyson never put in. He wonders if Naz wants one; maybe the baby would like it, when she’s older, or maybe the cat, if they let the cat outside. He doesn’t know if the cat’s an outside cat; probably not, if she started out a city cat in a condo in Toronto. They’re a long way from Toronto, though. 

That sits like a tweaked muscle in his chest, so much so that he’s almost relieved when the front door opens and Naz comes out. He’s wearing socks and slides and a hoodie, with the hood pulled over a baseball hat, and Nate can’t help rolling his eyes as he comes over to the car. 

“You’re lucky I recognized your car, man,” Naz says, breath puffing out in front of him. He has his hands shoved in his hoodie pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold. Nate rolls his eyes again and leans all the way over to open his passenger door, shooing Cox to the backseat. Naz gets in and leans back to give Cox some hearty pats. “And the dog, of course. Hey Cox.”

“Sorry,” Nate says. “I’m on my way somewhere and just wanted to pass by the old neighborhood. I didn’t mean to stop and creep.”

Naz shrugs. “Doesn’t matter to me. Creep away. I’ve got an attack cat in there to guard the baby, I’m all good.”

“Do you like the place?” Nate asks, nodding back towards the house. Naz grins at him, nodding quickly.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s great. Nice neighbors, we had trick-or-treaters and stuff, and the house is gorgeous, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Nate says, and they drop into a sort of awkward silence. 

Then they both try to speak at the same time. “I know—” “I was just—”

“You go,” Naz says when they both stop laughing. 

“I was just going to say, I mean—” Nate frowns, choosing his words carefully. “You know we’re cool, right?”

“Yeah,” Naz says. “I mean, I get it, but yeah. It’s not a big deal.”

“And I just wanted to say that like—I’ve had a hard time, and I know Tyson’s had a hard time, and none of that has anything to do with you. But also—if you’ve had a hard time, that totally makes sense and it’s okay and you can. Like, you can talk to me.” Nate sniffs and hurriedly adds, “Or Gabe or EJ or fuckin—whoever, man. We’re all here for you.”

Naz’s smile grows, unfurling across his face. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate that, and I’ll keep it in mind when we—you know.”

“I know. Toronto next week.” Nate nods determinedly. “Gabe and EJ won’t be there but I will be, so. Anytime, I mean it.” 

“Thanks,” Naz says again. His smile has gone soft, and he pulls Nate into a one-armed hug, the brim of his hat knocking into Nate’s temple. When he pulls back, the smile is still there. “You’ve been—like, all the guys have been really awesome. Even when it’s hard, that’s made it easier. There’s such a good group here.” He laughs a little. “And I’m not even media-speaking you, I mean it. You’ve got something really special with these guys.”

Nate knows that, but it’s still nice to be reminded. Hearing Naz talk like that, he knows then that he would’ve been okay with or without EJ reading to him, that he’ll be okay with this team no matter what happens after this lunch with EJ coming up.

“Yeah,” Nate says, smiling too. “You’re right. I’m still not getting matching Cup tattoos, though.”

Naz squawks in outrage, laughing hard. “What! Come on, you haven’t even seen my design ideas, you’ll love them—”

“Stop designing Cup tattoos before we’ve won the Cup!” Nate squawks back, and he covers his eyes as Naz tries to shove his phone at him, thumbing through his camera roll. 

Even with the unplanned but necessary Naz detour, Nate still rolls up to EJ’s house early. EJ opens his front door as Nate’s coming up the walkway, grinning ruefully. “Of course you’re early. Who’s surprised?” 

Cox interrupts them with a happy bark to bound out in front of Nate and join EJ’s pack. Within seconds they’ve raced through the house and Nate can hear all five dogs out in EJ’s yard, making a joyous ruckus together. EJ laughs at them and steps aside to let Nate in. 

He’s in comfortable house clothes, and it’s so familiar and attractive to Nate that he feels a little ridiculous for having missed him so much. It’s been literal days; he’s been on exactly one road trip without EJ, and even that had included EJ on the phone. 

Still, though. Nate’s so glad to see him. “You look good,” Nate says, accepting a Fiji bottle from EJ’s fridge and smiling down at it. He’d glimpsed a full-but-one case with the plastic still on it as EJ closed the fridge, and can’t stop feeling addicted to EJ taking care of him. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Recovering nicely from Kerf’s assassination attempt,” EJ says, flexing the shoulder in question carefully. “Rehabbing it for a bit, you know how it is.”

“Yep. Got you on the good stuff?” 

“You know it. Why?” A small, secret sort of smile spreads on EJ’s face. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

Nate doesn’t miss a beat. “Not lately.” 

They stand there smiling at each other like idiots, but Nate can’t feel that stupid. He’s right where he wants to be, in EJ’s kitchen on a sunny day where they have nowhere else to be for hours. They’re not on a road trip together, they’re not around each other because one of them can’t sleep—they’re just here, together, because they want to be. 

And it’s time to figure out _how _they want to be together. If this is it, if it’s just this, Nate thinks he can handle that. But he wants to know; he needs to know.

EJ says, “So what do you want for lunch? I took out chicken thighs and then realized you’d probably want chicken breasts because they’re healthier, but I think they’re still a little frozen so maybe we can—”

“I was hoping I could kiss you,” Nate says, finally registering that EJ is nervous and hoping that’s a good sign. It feels like a good sign. 

He bites his lip as EJ laughs, nervously, and says, “What?”

“I mean—can I kiss you? Would that be okay?” 

“Are you serious? Because if you’re not, it’s not a funny joke. Not really.” EJ winces, looking down at his feet, and Nate feels his heart swell. 

“I am dead serious, man. I want to kiss you. I want to more-than-kiss you. And like, half the team thinks we’re banging anyway, so—”

“Is that why?” EJ asks, chin raised. 

“What?”

“Is that the only reason you want to kiss me?”

“Are you insane? Of course not, who cares what the team thinks. I just want to kiss you because, you know.” Again, the word _love _presses against the inside of his chest, waiting to burst out. But Nate quiets it carefully to say, “I really like you. Like, I care about you a lot. And I hope you care about me too.” 

EJ snorts, and Nate doesn’t know how to take that, so he just waits. He waits a little long, long enough for doubts to start creeping in, making him clear his throat and shuffle his feet. Finally, Nate starts to say, “And it’s totally okay if you don’t, or not like that, I don’t mean—I really don’t need you to sleep anymore, I promise I’m okay, I talked to Tyson and to Naz and it wasn’t even about all that really, it was about—”

“Oh fucking come here, you idiot,” EJ says, moving with his arms outstretched. Nate moves too, pulse picking up with a thrilled fervor. EJ grabs his arms and instead of stilling him, instead of pushing him away or pinning him down to stop anything from escalating, he pulls him close and into a searing kiss. 

Their mouths come together hard and the kiss is brutally good, deep and wet and real, pressing what feels like weeks of wanting between them. Nate knew he wanted to do this but he didn’t really know how badly until it started. And now he never wants it to stop.

It stops because he feels cold wetness between their stomachs, and he has to break apart quickly to look down in horror. EJ laughs at him, as if reading his mind, but it’s the Fiji bottle Nate had slipped into his sweatshirt front pocket, leaking between them from the press of their bodies. 

“Awesome,” Nate grumbles, pulling it out and moving to let it drip over the sink instead of the hardwoods. “Sweet moment capper.” 

“I’d expect nothing less,” EJ says, joining him at the sink, pulling him close again like he can’t stand to be even that far apart. Nate feels warm all over with the feeling and pulls EJ down into another kiss, cupping his hand over EJ’s face and wishing he didn’t have his contacts in so he can take EJ’s glasses off for him. 

He wants to take more than that off for him, but he contents himself with kissing EJ stupid for now, standing in his kitchen while the dogs play outside and winter sunshine spills across the room. He presses kisses all over every bit of EJ’s face that he can reach and says, “We should go to bed.”

EJ chuckles into the bridge of his nose, kissing there. “Yeah? You don’t want lunch?” 

“We can have lunch later,” Nate promises, kissing the promise into EJ’s mouth. “Right now I want to get in bed with you.”

“You get in bed with me literally all of the time, you don’t want to change it up?”

“I definitely want to change it up,” Nate says, pushing his hips into EJ’s. He feels him shudder against him and it’s immensely satisfying. Even more satisfying is the sharpness in EJ’s answering kiss, nipping at his mouth. 

“Hmm,” he says darkly, breath hot against Nate’s cheek. “You don’t want to talk more first?”

“Erik,” Nate says firmly, pulling back to look EJ right in the eye, startling him. “I did all the talking already. I think I’ve been pretty clear. If you’re on the same page then let’s go, what’s the point in wasting time?” He thinks of something and pulls back a little further. “I mean, if we’re _not _on the same page, then—”

“I’m just yanking your chain, come on,” EJ says, pulling him in close again. He presses a hard, forceful kiss to Nate’s lips and adds, “I was trying to get you to beg for it but I guess I’ll have to do better than that.” His voice is low and gravely, and it’s Nate’s turn to shudder. 

“You definitely will. Let’s _go_.” 

EJ still doesn’t shut up on the way to the bedroom. He puts on his best Nate voice, mocking him. “‘If we’re _not _on the same page’—what do you think, I read to all our teammates? Spend every night on the road in bed with them?” 

“I don’t fucking know what you do,” Nate snaps back, rotating his wrist in EJ’s strong grip. “And you know it wasn’t like that, don’t act like it was some sex thing.”

“What, you didn’t want to call me daddy?” EJ asks, snickering. Nate hits him, which he’d been anticipating, because he takes it as an opportunity to grab Nate and wrestle him to the bed.

And it feels like a hundred other times he and EJ have roughhoused and wound up on a bed together, except it’s totally different. A main difference is that they’re both half hard. Another difference is that Nate never wants this to stop, never wants EJ to quit touching him. So he latches on so EJ won’t, kissing him again and again, shoving his fingers in EJ’s hair and sliding his legs between EJ’s. 

They lie on the bed like that for a while, lazily making out, definitely the strangest outcome of a wrestling match that Nate has ever seen—and that’s including the salad bowl. He’ll take it though; he’s greedy for all of this, passing new frontiers with EJ. Maybe they came into this backwards, finding a different kind of intimacy he’s only known in relationships and then backing into the sex part of it, but he has no doubt that it’ll be just as satisfying when they get there. 

His patience starts to wear thin, though EJ’s acting like he can just lie here with his tongue in Nate’s mouth forever. Nate shifts around until he’s sitting with his knees on either side of EJ’s hips, his jeans starting to feel uncomfortable, and then looks EJ in the eye as much as possible as he pulls his sweatshirt and t-shirt over his head. 

“Oh, I see how it is,” EJ says, grinning up at him. “It’s serious now.”

“Yeah it’s serious. Come on, get your clothes off.”

“I would but I’ve got a hockey player on top of me, kind of making it difficult—” He breaks off into a rough groan as Nate reaches down to pull his sweats off, groaning himself when he confirms EJ’s not wearing anything underneath. 

“Do you ever wear underwear?” Nate asks, chuckling. It’s not lost on either of them that he’s kind of asking EJ’s dick, though, unable to take his eyes off where it’s hard and a little damp against EJ’s shirt. 

EJ chuckles with him, blinking and shaking his head. “Who wears underwear in their own house? Besides, I knew you were coming over.”

“Oh really? So you knew we’d do this?” 

“I was hoping,” EJ says, and the slight shake in his voice makes Nate meet his eyes again. They’re bright and hopeful; there’s a fragile feeling lighting them up that makes Nate swallow hard and feel really important and really lucky and really protective. “I was kind of hoping for a while,” EJ admits, and it shakes through Nate’s heart. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But I just—I wanted to be there for you. I didn’t want you to feel like there wasn’t anyone you could go to, like with Tys gone there wasn’t anyone who could—I know I’m not Tyson. But—”

“You’re EJ,” Nate says softly, and EJ grins a little. 

“Right. I’m just EJ.”

“No just. You’re EJ, not Tyson, and I’m glad.” He rocks his hips into EJ’s, just slightly but enough to prove his point. EJ’s eyes slip closed and a groan slips from his mouth. “I definitely didn’t want to do this with Tyson.”

“That’s—that’s good,” EJ says, voice breaking up, and pulls Nate down for another hard kiss, taking his weight all along his front. 

They start taking off more clothes, and Nate’s fingers start trembling with anticipation. He doesn’t even know what exactly he wants, is relieved when EJ mumbles, “I want to fuck you. Can I?” in his ear because in that moment that’s exactly what he wants; he can’t believe he’s ever wanted anything else. He nods into EJ’s shoulder, kissing the freckled skin there, the summer surgery scar just below. 

It takes forever to get where they want to go because neither of them want to separate too much. At one point, when they spill the lube between them like the Fiji water, EJ laughs against Nate’s throat and says, “Will you let me take care of this and calm down?” and gets a pinch and a wet, dirty kiss for his trouble. 

Then Nate lies back on the bed, sinking into EJ’s pillows and covers like he’s ready for a story, and raises his eyebrows. A dark, hungry look crosses EJ’s face and he gives Nate another kiss before he finally gets to fingering him open, spreading Nate’s knees with one hand and then shoving pillows beneath his hips. “Comfy?” he asks, voice breaking again, and all Nate can do is nod and watch, tongue heavy with wanting. 

Nate thinks, as EJ gets him ready for his dick with those long, deft fingers, pressing into him in all the right spots and pulling moan after moan from his lips—he thinks about all the ways he’s going to take care of EJ, all the good stuff he’s going to do for him to start stacking up to all that EJ’s done for him. He thinks about how he’s going to be there for EJ, how he’s going to make sure that EJ knows he’s there for him. 

He thinks that’s what a relationship is, what he wants them to be. He’s excited about it, and a little scared he won’t be as good as EJ is at it, but mostly excited. And as he groans out, “EJ, please,” and sees triumph flash across EJ’s face, sees him lean in to kiss him and whisper, “See, that wasn’t so hard,” he thinks he has a lot of work ahead of him. And it’ll be totally worth it. 

It will _definitely _be worth it, since EJ proceeds to fuck Nate so hard his head spins. He feels himself flying apart almost too soon and EJ picks up on it to rear back a bit, slowing things down until Nate feels a sense of shaky control. And then he keeps going, fucking him slow and deep until Nate is egging him on for more again. 

They keep going like that—and of course EJ’s fucking teasing him, of course he would, there’s no way he’d ever do anything else to Nate in bed—until it feels like EJ’s the one starting to come apart. And then Nate eggs _that _on, leaning up to palm at EJ’s face, to chant, “Come on, come on, come in me,” lowly in his ear, EJ’s gasps and moans going straight to his own dick. 

It’s not long before EJ’s movements stutter to a stop and he grinds into Nate one last time, grunting out his orgasm into Nate’s neck. Nate holds him close and clenches down and loses himself so deeply in the feel of EJ going slack and relaxed and melty against him that he nearly sees stars when he feels EJ’s hand on his dick. 

Slicked by too much pre-come from too much teasing, EJ gives Nate a few firm strokes, grinding into him again, before he comes too, gasping and shaking in EJ’s hold. EJ grips him tight through all of it and keeps holding him when he goes slack, too; they fall into lying on the bed together and catch their breaths. 

“Fuck,” EJ says eventually, turning his face to look at Nate incredulously. “Why the hell were we reading when we could’ve been doing _that_ all these weeks? I’d bet that would get you to sleep.”

Nate laughs lightly, leaning in to press his face to EJ’s chest. He listens to the sound of his breathing start to slow down again, breathes in the smell of his soap and sweat and inherent, musky EJ-ness, and grins. “Yeah, you know, I could go for a nap.” 

EJ laughs too, patting Nate’s hip. “Yeah, okay. Let’s get cleaned up and I’ll tuck you in.” 

Nate beats EJ back to the bed after cleanup, getting comfortable like usual. He tucks the pillows he’d gotten fingered on at the bottom of the pillow pile and he’s put on borrowed sleep clothes but it otherwise feels like any other time they’ve gone to bed together. As EJ pads back into the room, contacts out and glasses in his hand, Nate spots the Oak Island book on the nightstand and snatches it up, holding it to his chest.

“Oh,” EJ says, fiddling with his glasses in his hands. “You don’t want to read a little?” 

Nate nods, grinning up at him. “I want to read to you for a change. Come on, get in here.” 

EJ grins back at him and bounds onto the bed, settling in close and leaning in even closer to smack a kiss to Nate’s mouth. “Sweet, okay. Are you a good reader?”

“I’m a _great _reader,” Nate says, lying through his teeth. He opens the book and takes out EJ’s trusty plane napkin bookmark and clears his throat. “Comfy?”

“The comfiest,” EJ says from his spot with his head on Nate’s arm, the rest of his long, lean body basically draped around him. 

“Good,” Nate says. He snuggles in too, and starts to read.


End file.
